Project Calico 2.2 Released!

#ReleaseTheCalico

We’re proud to announce the release of Project Calico 2.2. Along with performance and occupancy improvements, version 2.2 brings BIRD and GoBGP updates and continues the move towards fully featured KDD (Kubernetes Datastore Driver) support.

We also have to give a big thank you to Wataru Ishida and Josh Conant, who played a huge part in BGP updates in this release.

What’s New in Project Calico version 2.2:

• Improved GoBGP SupportWhile the default for Project Calico is still BIRD, the GoBGP has taken some important steps towards feature parity (notably IPIP support) thanks to Wataru who submitted a number of pull requests. This feature is still experimental and we’ve love to hear feedback from people trying it out.• CNI Version UpdateWe’ve upgraded our CNI to provide better versioning, consistency, and make future upgrades with Kubernetes, Apache Mesos, and Rkt easier. This also enables us to add some great new features from the new CNI updates in future Calico versions.

• KDD (Kubernetes Datastore Driver) RoutingYou can now use Project Calico with Kubernetes for both internal network routing and security in etcdless mode when using IP in IP overlays, or deploying on AWS. This builds on the 2.1 release that brought in KDD policies, and is a big step forward in terms of allowing full routing with BGP peering for etcdless mode in future releases.

• BGP Multipath Support with BIRD 1.6.3BIRD 1.6.3 has been merged into Project Calico, allowing you to take advantage of BGP Multipath. A big thank you to Josh who submitted this pull request.

• Felix Performance and Occupancy ImprovementsNumerous improvements were made for occupancy, including profiling, optimizing, and combining indexing datastructures as well as garbage collector tuning. There are also numerous improvements for performance including optimizing hot spots and batching/ back-pressure tuning to reduce CPU while under load. Overall, these changes showed a 60-70% decrease in occupancy at high scale over version 2.1, allowing large deployments to be handled more efficiently.

Of course, you can see the full list as well as specific updates to individual components in the 2.2 Release Notes.